The Man Who Walks Out
by InzanityFirez
Summary: Dean wonders what a 'Righteous Man' really is, and in the end, decides that it doesn't matter.   Because he's Dean Winchester, and whatever else he might be-he's not the type of man who walks out.


**Still way angsty after S7. XD And I really want to write some Dark!Dean stuff. Sam getting more glimpses into the madness of Dean's Hell and Alastair and such. And Cas getting an eyeful of the torment in his charge...I dunno. But for lack of time, I had to settle on something more minor and the quote about walking out came to mind and then...this. Whatever it ends up being. XD**

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_"And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks, so shall it break."_

Righteous Man.

What the _Hell_ was a Righteous Man?

Dean had never felt 'righteous' a day in his life. Or his second life. Or his third. Was there a fourth? He was starting to lose count.

Castiel questioned his lack of faith, y'know, before he lost his own. But it didn't make any damned sense to have faith. His mother had had it, she'd told him that angels were watching over him but in his experience the only good angel was a dead one.

Cas, and _maybe_ Gabriel excluded. Generally speaking.

Where were the damned angels, or God for that matter, when his mother had been brutally murdered and left him and Sam with a revenge-driven, broken-hearted hunter for a father? Where were they when Sam was drinking demon slurpees? Or Hell, where we they when their 'Righteous Man' got chomped on by frigging Hell hounds? Oh, that's right, they _wanted_ it to happen. So that he'd go to Hell and fulfill his destiny of breaking the first seal.

But he'd had thirty years of physical torture and a decade of inhumanity first. And how he managed to crawl up out of that grave and not drop his own sorry ass back in was a miracle unto itself. Dean Winchester didn't do 'chick-flick', or cry, or bitch. He came out of Hell with all of his irony and self-loathing firmly intact and none of it showing. That wasn't something that he'd let others-Sammy-see.

If there really was a monster in Dean, if _he _really was a monster, it didn't change anything. He'd still do his job. Protect Sammy, save the world, kill some evil sons of bitches. Nothing changed.

Nothing but him.

_"You're not hungry, Dean, because inside, you're already...dead."_

What did that mean? Some of what he said was true, maybe. Things didn't taste right after Hell, for starters. It was hard to eat meat when your own meat had been dangled before you, but the Dean of old would have dug right in-so that's what he did. And women didn't feel quite the same after he'd felt their torn flesh beneath his fingers. But the man he'd been had reveled in the feeling-so he did too, more moderately. And being Sam's big brother...? That was something that Hell couldn't change. But it was something that whoring himself out to Hell to save Sammy-only to have his brother choose a demon bitch over him-could...alter. Dean had thought that that was the one untouchable truth in his life.

But he'd been wrong.

Even so, he'd taken Sam back. He couldn't do otherwise, it was too far ingrained in his very being that Sam was his other-half, his to protect and watch over, and in some ways-vice versa. That had been according to Sam, but Dean hadn't been kidding about them keeping each other human. His love for his brother remained unchanged, even after Hell, and the betrayals, and all the crap that the universe threw at them to keep them apart. It broke his will to love, sometimes, but it never changed that. And after everything, to save the world, he'd let the one thing in his life that mattered more than anything, the one absolute tether that he had to his fragile, broken humanity, jump into a fiery pit. His Dad, and his Mom, he'd always loved them. He loved Bobby like a father figure, he really did. And as much as he could love a woman, he loved Lisa, he could even feel the tender flickers of happiness with her that were unknown anywhere else. And Ben? The kid was...well, he'd meant it when he said that he'd have been proud to be the kid's Dad. As for Cas. The son of a bitch was annoying, and naive, and a damned child. And he'd betrayed Dean-just like Sam. But he was the closest thing to another brother Dean had ever had, not even Caleb had topped it-back when he and the Pastor were closer. But Sam? There was no comparison. Sam was part of Dean and Dean was part of him, missing Sam was like missing half himself. The good half, most of the time.

Did that make him Righteous? Forgiving others even when he couldn't forgive himself? And he couldn't-not for any of it. It was fucked up, and not fair, and so very wrong. What the Hell had he ever done to deserve it? Why'd he have to go to Hell? Why'd he have to be Michael's prom-tux, as it were. Why did every damned force in the universe keep trying to tear the little, torn-up slice of family that he had left apart? Did Dean just not deserve to be happy? Because he sure as Hell doubted that he deserved to be saved. But he still couldn't forgive the times that he'd failed his baby brother, and thus his father, or the people that he'd failed to save, the people who were hurt because of him, the souls in Hell that he'd tortured, or even his own attempts to descend into mind-numbing oblivion.

_"You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out."_

He'd told that to Castiel once and in the end, he'd proved it right in the wrong way when he'd come out a bloody, ass-kicked mess. But he'd definitely meant it differently. Because somewhere in Dean's mind, he wasn't all there. He'd been all broken up and twisted in Hell. The Dean who'd gone into Hell wasn't the same Dean who'd tortured all those people, and he wasn't even same Dean who'd crawled out of Hell. Same person, same body, but they didn't feel the same-they couldn't. They'd lost too much and gained too little and the hits just kept on coming. Dean could only try to adapt, and try to focus on the only things that made sense. Watching Sammy. Doing his job as a hunter. Keeping an eye on the 'family'.

But how was he supposed to watch Sam when the other was doing his damndest to hide himself away, save for his shitty, half-assed smiles and glass-half-full crap that they both knew he didn't really believe. And hunting? Was he supposed to squeeze that in before or after the rounds of Apocalypse, beasties, and stabs-in-the-back from his so-called 'family and friends'. Family. But damned if he wasn't still gun-ready, still fighting, _for them_. It would have been so easy to just give up and say 'yes', he'd been so tired, so beaten, so _done_. But for family, he just...had to keep fighting. For Sammy.

So Dean walked a fine line between himself and the halves of his twisted, supposedly 'righteous' soul. He'd thrown himself into torturing the demons who might have information on Ben and Lisa, he'd been the 'bad guy' and offered up Cas to Death on a silver platter, and he'd been about ready to sit back and watch the world burn because damnit-why was it his job to care?

And now it was happening all over again. Castiel had come back, the Castiel that was awkward, and embarrassing, and -not that he'd say it- but endearing-the one that he'd called brother. And then he'd been ripped away despite his attempt to prove himself a Winchester with a little self-sacrifice on his behalf, ready to die to fix his wrongs, and suffer torment to keep the demons-or rather, Leviathons at bay.

Dean was tired. To the core of his bloodied, supposedly righteous soul. He didn't know how to be the man that they wanted him to be, and there were so many choices. Dean Winchester: hunter, brother, would-be father, would-be husband, killer, loyal son, holy vessel, instrument of destiny, Hell-spawn, the list went on. But when did anyone ask what he wanted? When did anyone bother to ask who _Dean Winchester _really was? And if they asked, would he even know how to answer?

But there was one thing he knew. Dead or not inside, betrayed or not, broken or bleeding, not-crying and not-bitching, Dean Winchester wasn't a quitter-close though he'd come. Because there were still things, and people, worth fighting for. It wasn't always easy to see, but that didn't mean that he was going to stop looking. The alternative just wasn't acceptable.

So he'd don the mantle of the Righteous Man again, whatever that meant. And he'd live with the knowledge that there was more to him than could be summed up with that. And not all of it was good, or worthy, and damn sure not something to be saved. But maybe there was something decent there, there had to be-he believed that. Hadn't he done enough to prove it? All those different choices, but something integral that was the same, that was good. The Dean he'd known, and been, and become. The Dean who'd broken the first seal. Maybe he was dead inside, maybe he didn't deserve to be saved, but he still had things that mattered. So he'd fight, and keep fighting. Leviathons, Fate, Destiny, Death, Hell, 'God' himself if that's what it took. Because that was who he was, and who he chose to be. Call it his prerogative as part of Team Free Will.

Dean couldn't say for sure the man who walked out: out of a 'normal' childhood, out of Hell, out of Sam's life for a time, out of humanity, out of himself, out of anything that made sense, out of any of the crap that made up his life. All he could do was do his best, and if he tripped sometimes and lost his way, well-there were Sam and Bobby to pick up the pieces and keep his ass moving.

Dean was, whoever else he might have been, the man who walked out. But what he wasn't-was the type of man who walks out.

And as he faced the next threat to his strange, broken, wonderful damned life-

_Dean Winchester _knew there was a difference.

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**I have no idea what this is. I guess you could say it's Dean's emotional/mental/personal state after S7x1. But not exactly? I don't know. XD Leave me verbal hugs, because they brighten my existence and compel me to write more stories for your reading pleasure. If it gave you no reading pleasure...well. There aren't enough teddy-bears in the world to soak up my sorrows. XD~ **


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